Media advisor is second highest-paid in PMO

Life isn’t easy for a public servant in the age of transparency, when every little detail is open to scrutiny under the right to information (RTI).

Mail Today, the tabloid newspaper owned by the India Today group, carries a two-page story today on what the prime minister and his key men earn, and it turns out that the PM’s media advisor, Pankaj Pachauri, gets Rs 30,000 less than his master, Manmohan Singh (Rs 1.6 lakh per month).

(Update: Sanjay Kapoor, editor of Hard News, points out on Twitter that Muthu Kumar who reports to Pachauri gets more than his boss.)

The salaries of all the employees in the PMO, their total salary bill, the PMO’s budget for 2012-13, the travel details of officials besides the PM’s own salary have been posted on the PMO’s website, under section 4 of the RTI Act.